[Lazarus] New Help System & Viewer - sneak preview

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

> 2009/10/1 Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org>:
>>
>> Good. Maybe you can add a compiled INF format then as well...
>
> I'm will be working on a Object Pascal implementation of the IPF
> compiler. Currently I'm using the WIPFC complier from the the Open
> Watcom v1.9 (beta) project. They implemented their own IPF compiler to
> overcome bugs in the original IBM IPFC compiler. Plus the new WIPFC
> compiler is available for more platforms.
>
>
>> Did you write the converter program yourself or is it something external ?
>
> Custom written, but far from complete.

Hats off... I've been waiting for something like this for years... :)

>
> By the way, why did you use line drawing in the syntax format
> diagrams?  During my help format research I played around with
> OpenOffice and could duplicate the ref.pdf with OpenOffice and using
> DejaVu font, and use Unicode block drawing symbols to end up with a
> slightly better looking output than the LaTeX line drawing.  Maybe
> "slightly better looking" is a biased statement. :-) I can send you a
> ODT & PDF document in private if you want to compare.  Unicode block
> drawing symbols are very handy for just such things - old ASCII Art
> style. ;-)

A latex package was used to create the diagrams.

Michael.